ACM SIGMM retreat report on future directions in multimedia research

Reviewer: David Gary Hill

This paper presents the recommendations of the strategic retreat that was held as part of ACM Multimedia 2003 by the ACM Multimedia Special Interest Group (SIGMM). These recommendations arose principally out of the first day of the retreat, a day that focused on future directions for multimedia research. The retreat met its primary goal by identifying three "grand challenges" that multimedia researchers need to solve. The first is to "make authoring complex multimedia titles as easy as using a word processor or drawing program." This challenge seeks to develop the algorithms, heuristics, and tools that will enable average users to develop professional quality multimedia content. The second grand challenge is "to make interactions with remote people and environments nearly the same as interactions with local people and environments." Two problems are contained within this challenge-distributed collaboration and interactive, immersive three-dimensional environments. This is the telepresence challenge that seeks to make all interactions seem local rather than remote. The third and final challenge is "to make capturing, storing, finding, and using digital media an everyday occurrence in our computing environment." This is the information-at-your-fingertips challenge that seeks to capture, transform, and organize digital media information haystacks into turbocharged information "yellow pages." This paper is useful for those researchers who want to contribute to solving one or more of the grand challenges, as well as to any reader who wants to have a better understanding of where multimedia is headed and why. Online Computing Reviews Service